How to Grow a Distribution Business

Revenue Architects for Distribution & Consumer Product Companies

Ready to fast-track company growth?

Use Data Driven Insights to Grow a Distribution Business

How do you most effectively grow a Wholesale Distributor or Consumer Packaged Goods company? That's a question best answered with data.

Research findings published in the Business Growth Report shared that the highest growth Wholesale Distributors and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies (i.e., the Best-in-Class which achieved the top 15% growth) excelled using a mix of 9 revenue growth programs.

These 9 programs stood apart from all others in terms of their ability to deliver the most significant and sustained revenue impact. A relative comparison showing how these 9 growth programs were applied by each growth archetype is shown below.

Here are some of the research insights that share how these programs impact revenue growth.

Growth Strategy

The research revealed Distribution and CPG companies that actively managed a Revenue Growth Strategy achieved 2.8 times higher year over year revenue growth than those who did not. The Revenue Growth strategy is not your business plan. It's the selected revenue programs weaved into a roadmap to achieve targeted financial results in the shortest time and least cost.

As demonstrated by the results of the Best-in-Class Distributor and CPG companies, advancing your growth strategy from a Median performance to a Best-in-Class performance will increase annual revenue growth by 1.2 to 1.6 percentage points and EBITDA margins by 1.4 to 1.9 percentage points, on average.

Customer Relationships

Customer relationships are highly influential in growing distribution and CPG companies. Customer relationships grow customer lifetime value and create a protective barrier against competitors offering similar products and services. Relationships turn first time buyers into repeat customers and repeat customers into customer advocates. That makes customer relationships the distributor's most valuable and durable asset.

Research found that advancing customer relationships from a Median level to the Best-in-Class level increases annual revenue growth by 1.4 to 2.0 percentage points and EBITDA margins by 1.9 to 3.1 percentage points, on average.

Innovation

The most successful wholesale distribution companies have applied innovation to create differentiated services. Distributors with the highest new revenue streams invested 17-21% more funds into transformative innovation. On average, about 31% of their innovation budget was directed to transformative innovation. By comparison, distributors with lower new revenue streams allocated more than 90% of their budget to incremental innovation, which is typically limited to improving existing services.

The innovation research demonstrates that shifting the innovation budget allocation toward more transformative innovation can achieve annual revenue growth of 1.4 to 2.1 percentage points and EBITDA margins by 1.9 to 2.9 percentage points.

Corporate Culture

Distribution and CPG companies that cited corporate culture as a growth strategy achieved an average of 30% higher revenue growth than those who didn't. They also earned 12% higher revenue per employee and 6% lower staff churn. The research also found that building an intentional and proactively designed growth culture can grow annual revenue from 1.7 to 2.5 percentage points and EBITDA margins by 2.2 to 3.1 percentage points, on average.

Wholesale Distributors and CPG companies that realized the highest revenue growth assembled a combination of the 9 most impactful revenue growth programs.

Each of these 9 programs are solidified into evidence-based best practices that provide prescriptive implementation frameworks to be replicated by others seeking to achieve similar growth results.

Increasing Distribution and CPG Revenue Growth is our Business

Our core competency is helping clients implement best practices that accelerate revenues and profits.

Our evidence-based revenue growth best practices are validated by industry research, include prescriptive frameworks, leverage technology automation, and have purpose-built measurement systems (i.e., dashboards and predictive analytics.)

To de-risk our programs, our services include program management, organizational change management and governance.

Johnny Growth Company Growth Signature Services

Company Growth Strategy

Companies with data-driven growth strategies achieve 2.8 times higher annual sales growth than those without

Learn More

RevOps

SiriusDecisions reports organizations that deployed RevOps grew revenue three times faster than those that didn't

Learn More

Rev Tech Stack

Growth technologies and organized RevTech stacks achieve double digit ROI and scale company growth

Learn More

Innovation Programs

Create competitive differentiation that increases margins, accelerates revenues and grows companies

Learn More

Customer Growth Strategies

Increase customer expansion and retention; two factors that deliver significant and sustained sales growth

Learn More

Corporate Culture

Build a growth culture to drive double digit improvements to labor productivity, customer engagement and sales growth

Learn More

Process Automation

Simplify, streamline and automate business processes to improve productivity, lower cost and drive operational excellence

Learn More

M&A

Use M&A to accelerate organic growth, leapfrog competitors, create new revenue streams and quickly boost top line revenues

Learn More

Supply Chain Sustainability

Sustainability programs to lower carbon emissions, reduce costs and grow revenues

Learn More

Research Shows What the Highest Performers Do Differently

The Business Growth Report surfaced and ranked the growth strategies, methods and technologies which delivered the biggest impact to company growth.

The report identifies what the highest growth companies (i.e., the top 15 percent) do better and differently than all other lower growth companies – and how they do it.

It delivers data-driven findings and insights that can be replicated.